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Georgia State University

2014

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Articles 1 - 30 of 40

Full-Text Articles in Economics

Consumer Learning And Hybrid Vehicle Adoption, Garth Heutel Aug 2014

Consumer Learning And Hybrid Vehicle Adoption, Garth Heutel

ECON Publications

We study the effect of differences in product quality on new technology diffusion. We propose a model in which heterogeneity in perceived product quality affects consumer adoption. If consumers experientially infer the quality of a technology, an increase in initial exposure to a low-quality product may inhibit subsequent diffusion. Incentives intended to speed up adoption may in fact have the opposite effect, if they propagate low-quality signals. We examine the predictions of the model using sales data for 11 hybrid-vehicle models between 2000 and 2006. Consistent with press reports that the first-generation Insight was perceived to be of lower quality …


The Impact Of Air Temperature On Mortality, Morbidity, And Healthcare Cost In The Medicare Population, Garth Heutel, Nolan H. Miller, David Molitor Jul 2014

The Impact Of Air Temperature On Mortality, Morbidity, And Healthcare Cost In The Medicare Population, Garth Heutel, Nolan H. Miller, David Molitor

ECON Publications

Abstract: This paper merges weekly average temperature data from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center (NDCC) with Medicare claims data in order to analyze the impact of high and low temperatures on mortality, onset of new chronic conditions, and hospital spending. We find a U-shaped pattern to mortality, with high and low temperature weeks exhibiting higher mortality than a 70 degree reference week. The marginal deaths in extreme weeks are healthier than the typical person who dies in the reference week, but less healthy than the population as a whole. We find some evidence of short-term mortality …


Time Preferences And Consumer Behavior, Garth Heutel, David Bradford, Charles Courtemanche, Patrick Mcalvanah, Christopher Ruhm Jul 2014

Time Preferences And Consumer Behavior, Garth Heutel, David Bradford, Charles Courtemanche, Patrick Mcalvanah, Christopher Ruhm

ECON Publications

We investigate the predictive power of survey-elicited time preferences using a representative sample of US residents. In regressions controlling for demographics and risk preferences, we show that the discount factor elicited from choice experiments using multiple price lists and real payments predicts various health, energy, and financial outcomes, including overall self-reported health, smoking, drinking, car fuel efficiency, and credit card balance. We allow for time-inconsistent preferences and find that the long-run and present bias discount factors (δ and β) are each significantly associated in the expected direction with several of these outcomes. Finally, we explore alternate measures of time preference. …


The Trouble With China: How South Africa's Largest Trading Partner Is Undermining Its Economy, David Churvis Apr 2014

The Trouble With China: How South Africa's Largest Trading Partner Is Undermining Its Economy, David Churvis

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.


The Effects Of Risk Based Capital Requirement On Credit Allocations In The Us, Dita Aisyah Apr 2014

The Effects Of Risk Based Capital Requirement On Credit Allocations In The Us, Dita Aisyah

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.


Intergenerational Mobility And Urban Spatial Structure, Sebastian Quintero Apr 2014

Intergenerational Mobility And Urban Spatial Structure, Sebastian Quintero

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.


A Tale Of Two Cities? The Heterogeneous Impact Of Medicaid Managed Care, James Marton, Aaron Yelowitz, Jeffery C. Talbert Mar 2014

A Tale Of Two Cities? The Heterogeneous Impact Of Medicaid Managed Care, James Marton, Aaron Yelowitz, Jeffery C. Talbert

ECON Publications

Evaluating Accountable Care Organizations is difficult because there is a great deal of heterogeneity in terms of their reimbursement incentives and other programmatic features. We examine how variation in reimbursement incentives and administration among two Medicaid managed care plans impacts uti- lization and spending. We use a quasi-experimental approach exploiting the timing and county-specific implementation of Medicaid managed care mandates in two contiguous regions of Kentucky. We find large differences in the relative success of each plan in reducing utilization and spending that are likely driven by important differences in plan design. The plan that capitated primary care physicians and …


Subsidies, Garth Heutel Jan 2014

Subsidies, Garth Heutel

ECON Publications

No abstract provided.


A Retrospective On Taxation In Developing Countries: Will The Weakest Link Be Strengthened?, Roy W. Bahl Jan 2014

A Retrospective On Taxation In Developing Countries: Will The Weakest Link Be Strengthened?, Roy W. Bahl

ECON Publications

No abstract provided.


Tax Structure And Corruption: Cross-Country Evidence, Yongzheng Liu, Haibo Feng Jan 2014

Tax Structure And Corruption: Cross-Country Evidence, Yongzheng Liu, Haibo Feng

ICEPP Working Papers

The determinants of corruption have long been an important subject for research in the elds of economics and political science. The literature has identi ed a wide range of factors that cause corruption; however, little research has been done on how the design of government policy in uences corruption. We advance a new factor, the tax structure being measured as both tax mix and tax complexity, as another potential cause of corruption, and present strong supporting evidence by using a large sample of countries over the period 1995-2009. Our ndings indicate that: (1) countries relying more heavily on direct taxes …


Estimating The Personal Income Distribution In Spanish Municipalities Using Tax Micro-Data, Miriam Hortas-Rico, Jorge Onrubia, Daniele Pacifico Jan 2014

Estimating The Personal Income Distribution In Spanish Municipalities Using Tax Micro-Data, Miriam Hortas-Rico, Jorge Onrubia, Daniele Pacifico

ICEPP Working Papers

Local income data is an important economic indicator, widely used in a broad range of studies related to regional convergence, urban economics, fiscal federalism, housing and spatial analysis. Despite its importance, there is a lack of official data on local incomes and, most importantly, on local income distributions. In this paper we use official data on personal income tax returns and a reweighting procedure to derive a representative income sample at the local level. Unlike previous attempts in the literature to acquire local income estimates, the results obtained allow us to derive not only an average value for income but …


Decentralized Provision Of Public Infrastructure And Corruption, Anwar Shah Jan 2014

Decentralized Provision Of Public Infrastructure And Corruption, Anwar Shah

ICEPP Working Papers

During the past three decades, a large number of countries have introduced reforms to decentralize public decision making. Such reforms have proved controversial. Critics of these reforms argue that decentralized provision of infrastructure enhances vulnerability to corruption. Proponents of these reforms counter that corruption arises from lack of people empowerment and decentralization by bringing decision making closer to people shines sunlight on government operations and empowers people to hold government to account and thereby offers potential for combating corruption in the long run. They further state that decentralized provision of infrastructure holds a great promise in upgrading infrastructure to underserviced …


Corruption And Firm Tax Evasion, James Alm, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Chandler Mcclellan Jan 2014

Corruption And Firm Tax Evasion, James Alm, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Chandler Mcclellan

ICEPP Working Papers

Although corruption and tax evasion are distinct and separate problems, they can easily become intertwined and reinforcing. A society that is more corrupt may enable more tax evasion as corrupt officials seek more income via bribes; conversely, higher levels of tax evasion may drive corruption by offering more opportunities for bribes. While a large body of work on each subject separately has emerged, the relationship between the two problems has remained a largely unexplored area. In particular, there is no theoretical work that examines the relationship between corruption and firm tax evasion, focusing on how the potential for bribery of …


Investing In Health Infrastructure: How Decentralization Matters, Richard M. Bird, Francois Vaillancourt Jan 2014

Investing In Health Infrastructure: How Decentralization Matters, Richard M. Bird, Francois Vaillancourt

ICEPP Working Papers

This paper examines the infrastructure–decentralization nexus in the production of health services with a particular emphasis on the issue of health infrastructure. The first part of the paper presents evidence on health services and infrastructure spending in health for various countries or groups of countries showing the importance of infrastructure spending in the provision of health services. The second part of the paper examines why and how health services are joint production with collective and private characteristics. These characteristics affect the decentralization of such services and thus the decentralization of health infrastructure; it also raises the issue of who should …


Educational Infrastructure, School Construction, & Decentralization In Developing Countries: Key Issues For An Understudied Area, Alec Ian Gershberg Jan 2014

Educational Infrastructure, School Construction, & Decentralization In Developing Countries: Key Issues For An Understudied Area, Alec Ian Gershberg

ICEPP Working Papers

Poor and insufficient school infrastructure negatively impacts student learning and schooling outcomes. Myriad factors have contributed to an infrastructure gap in the education sector in many countries – rapid increases in enrolments, poor maintenance and aging capital stocks, rural to urban migration, and inefficient government planning and school construction to name a few. Various forms of decentralization are likely to be involved both to improve governance and accountability and to foster innovation and cost saving in the school construction industry and investment and project cycle. This paper first discusses why the topic is interesting and worth considering; next we lay …


Public Input Competition Under Stackelberg Equilibrium: A Note, Yongzheng Liu, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez Jan 2014

Public Input Competition Under Stackelberg Equilibrium: A Note, Yongzheng Liu, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez

ICEPP Working Papers

This paper examines the Stackelberg equilibrium for public input competition and compares it with the non-cooperative Nash equilibrium. Given two asymmetric regions, we show that under the Nash equilibrium, the more productive region tends to spend more on public input, which results in this region attracting more capital than the less productive region. The comparison of the two equilibria reveals that the leader region obtains a rst-mover advantage under the Stackelberg setting. This suggests that if regions interact with each other sequentially as in the Stackelberg equilibrium, then the regional disparity that is due to the heterogeneity of productivity is …


Rural Roads: Multi-Tier Monitoring Of Infrastructure: Top Down And Bottom Up, Ha. T.T. Vu, Robert D. Ebel Jan 2014

Rural Roads: Multi-Tier Monitoring Of Infrastructure: Top Down And Bottom Up, Ha. T.T. Vu, Robert D. Ebel

ICEPP Working Papers

The focus of this paper is on the last set of these questions -- that of the capacity and the practice of decentralized infrastructure monitoring. The experience and practice of low, middle and high income countries alike is considered. The paper is organized as follows: the next section, Section 2, defines how infrastructure is defined for purposes here, and then proceeds to discuss where the monitoring of infrastructure fits into the broader activity of decentralized infrastructure management. Section 3 then lays out some of the “pre-conditions” for effective decentralized monitoring of infrastructure, leading to the conclusion that for many developing …


Capital Infrastructure And Equity Objectives In Decentralized Systems, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Andrey Timofeev Jan 2014

Capital Infrastructure And Equity Objectives In Decentralized Systems, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Andrey Timofeev

ICEPP Working Papers

All in all, in this paper we argue that disparities in the availability of and need for capital infrastructure matters for fiscal equity. However, we believe that a proper discussion of this topic should be framed in terms of the incidence of outputs and outcomes of public services produced with this infrastructure. Infrastructure alone cannot be assigned any policy priority independent of programs and services that utilize these capital assets. Once we place this discussion in the framework of access to and quality of public services, we then move to the question of the best form of policy intervention, which …


Some New Thoughts On Performance Evaluation Of Governments: An Application To Indian Cities, Simanti Bandyopadhyay Jan 2014

Some New Thoughts On Performance Evaluation Of Governments: An Application To Indian Cities, Simanti Bandyopadhyay

ICEPP Working Papers

The present paper is an attempt to build up a framework which can holistically analyse the performance of governments bringing in the financial parameters as well as service delivery. We propose a three step methodology capturing different aspects of performance, integrated in the same framework. We generate the expenditure efficiency scores of governments based on expenditure and service delivery, applying non parametric Data Envelopment Analysis in the first step. This also enables us to identify the possible sources of mis-utilisation of resources on different expenditure heads. The second step consists of a detailed assessment of fiscal patterns of governments with …


But Most Of All We Love Each Other: Does Social Cohesion Pay Off? Evidence From Fdi Flows To Middle Income Countries, Wasseem Mina Jan 2014

But Most Of All We Love Each Other: Does Social Cohesion Pay Off? Evidence From Fdi Flows To Middle Income Countries, Wasseem Mina

ICEPP Working Papers

The World Bank (2013) argues that social cohesion shapes the context in which entrepreneurs make investment decisions and therefore job creation. In this paper, we focus on FDI as one link of primary importance in this argument, and empirically examine the relationship between social cohesion and FDI flows. Using panel data on 52 middle income countries for the period 1984-2012, we first identify social cohesion-related institutions using principal component analysis and then examine the influence of those institutions individually and as a principal component on FDI flows. PCA identifies religion in politics, internal and external conflicts, and ethnic tensions as …


Municipal Finance In India: Some Critical Issues, Simanti Bandyopadhyay Jan 2014

Municipal Finance In India: Some Critical Issues, Simanti Bandyopadhyay

ICEPP Working Papers

With the help of the available literature, the paper attempts to assess critically the main problems of municipal finances in India and to bring out the challenges that the municipalities face with respect to revenue generation and expenditure management. The main findings suggest that the urban local bodies in India are confronted with lack of proper decentralization of functions and finances, inadequate revenue generation, expenditure shortfalls leading to poor service delivery. It also analyses the suggestions and recommendations that have been offered in the literature to cope with these critical challenges relating to urban finance.


Tax Evasion, The Provision Of Public Infrastructure, And Growth: A General Equilibrium Approach To Two Very Different Countries, Egypt And Mauritius, Andrew Feltenstein Jan 2014

Tax Evasion, The Provision Of Public Infrastructure, And Growth: A General Equilibrium Approach To Two Very Different Countries, Egypt And Mauritius, Andrew Feltenstein

ICEPP Working Papers

We construct a dynamic multi-period general equilibrium model and use it to analyze prospects for growth in two very different countries, Egypt and Mauritius. The use of a single model has the advantage that when comparing alternative policies across countries, it is not necessary to worry if different conclusions are based solely upon model differences, as would be the case with multiple models. In the case of Egypt we look at the effects of the revolution of 2011 on growth, in particular, at the impact of a dramatic decline in tourism. In addressing the issue of how to increase growth …


Impact Of Fiscal Decentralization On Economic Growth In The Districts Of Nepal, K. L. Devkota Jan 2014

Impact Of Fiscal Decentralization On Economic Growth In The Districts Of Nepal, K. L. Devkota

ICEPP Working Papers

This paper focuses on the evolving pattern of fiscal decentralization and its impact on the growth of per capita GDP of the districts in Nepal. The dependent variable is the growth of the per capita district agricultural GDP, which is, used as a proxy for the annual growth of per capita district GDP growth. The revenue and expenditure indices have been used as the fiscal decentralization variables. The paper also uses a dummy variable for the Local Self Governance Act (LSGA) as a fiscal decentralization variable. From the various regressions, it is found that fiscal decentralization has positively influenced the …


The Political Economy Of Local Infrastructure Planning, Leonardo Romeo, Paul Smoke Jan 2014

The Political Economy Of Local Infrastructure Planning, Leonardo Romeo, Paul Smoke

ICEPP Working Papers

Developing countries face considerable challenges in the design and operation of local infrastructure planning systems in decentralized or decentralizing countries. Many of these are well documented, but the complex political economy environment in which planning evolves has received insufficient attention. The forces driving decentralization and other public sector reforms shape how planning emerges, functions and performs. Local planning involves a range of differentially empowered and variously motivated actors at multiple levels and in diverse ways. The dynamics among them can support or undermine authentic local planning, with potentially significant implications for results. This paper reviews the evolution of local infrastructure …


Inter-Jurisdictional Tax Competition In China, Yongzheng Liu, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez Jan 2014

Inter-Jurisdictional Tax Competition In China, Yongzheng Liu, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez

ICEPP Working Papers

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence on the extent and possible channels of tax competition among provincial governments in China. Using a panel of provincial- level data for 1993-2007, we nd strong evidence of strategic tax interaction among provincial governments. Tax policy is approximated by average e ective tax rates on foreign investment, taking into account the tax incentives available to foreign in- vestors. In line with the predictions of the theoretical tax competition literature, we also highlight the impact of each province's characteristics (including its size and level of industrialization) on the strategic interaction with its neighbors. Finally, …


Does Competition For Capital Discipline Governments? The Role Of Fiscal Equalization, Yongzheng Liu Jan 2014

Does Competition For Capital Discipline Governments? The Role Of Fiscal Equalization, Yongzheng Liu

ICEPP Working Papers

This paper examines how a scal equalization system a ects the disciplining e ect of competition for capital among heterogeneous regions in a decentralized economy. I build a model in which regions that are heterogeneous in initial endowments try to attract capital by competing public input that enhances the productivity of capital; meanwhile, a scal equalization system is imposed by the central government to reduce regional disparities in scal capacity. The key prediction, borne out in data from the German equalization system, is that while competition for capital strengthens discipline in the well-endowed regions, it weakens discipline in the poorly-endowed …


Decentralization And Infrastructure: From Gaps To Solutions, Jonas Frank, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez Jan 2014

Decentralization And Infrastructure: From Gaps To Solutions, Jonas Frank, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez

ICEPP Working Papers

The subnational dimension of infrastructure emerges as one of the greatest challenges in contemporary public finance policy and management. Given the localized nature of most infrastructures, ensuring its efficient provision represents a challenge for all countries irrespective of their level of centralization or decentralization. This paper introduces the fundamental questions surrounding the provision of infrastructure in decentralized settings and summarizes the findings from a collection of original essays prepared for this volume by a set of worldwide experts on this subject with the objective of advancing our understanding of the interplay between decentralization and infrastructure. More specifically, the paper discusses …


Decentralization And Infrastructure: Principles And Practice, Roy W. Bahl, Richard M. Bird Jan 2014

Decentralization And Infrastructure: Principles And Practice, Roy W. Bahl, Richard M. Bird

ICEPP Working Papers

This paper reviews the theoretical and practical issues surrounding the decentralization of responsibility for the provision of infrastructure to local governments in low income countries. The focus is on structural rather than management issues. There is plenty of evidence that following the theory can lead to efficient outcomes under decentralization, but also plenty of evidence that the theory and the practice often diverge widely. Seven policy rules that could support a successful decentralization of appropriate infrastructure services are drawn out of this review.


Rural Roads: The Challenge Of Decentralized Implementation, Simon D. Ellis, Aurelio Menendez Jan 2014

Rural Roads: The Challenge Of Decentralized Implementation, Simon D. Ellis, Aurelio Menendez

ICEPP Working Papers

This paper will review the key elements required for effective decentralized implementation of rural roads programs. It will review the range of options available and the evidence for successful implementation where it exists. Section 2 makes the case for the importance of rural roads and sets out the evidence for the socio-economic benefits. Section 3 addresses the responsibilities for implementation and critical importance of having clarity over network ownership. Section 4 highlights the difficulties of finance, particularly for longer term maintenance, and sets out options for improving allocations and the reliability of receipt for those allocations. Section 5 sets out …


Efficiency Cost Of Fiscal Equalization:The Case Of Belarus, Sebastian Eckardt, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Andrey Timofeev Jan 2014

Efficiency Cost Of Fiscal Equalization:The Case Of Belarus, Sebastian Eckardt, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Andrey Timofeev

ICEPP Working Papers

No abstract provided.